Honor Code: The Problems Of Cheating In School

Cheating is a persistent problem in many schools all accross the world. School administrators have tried many systems to promote academic integrity with the hope of keeping grades fair for all students. Honor codes have been a popular way of trying to prevent cheating. An honor code is a system in which students agree not to cheat on assignments, and also report any other students they may see cheating, however although students agree they do not always follow through causing problems and allowing cheating to continue. Although honor codes are a noble idea in theory, their lack of effectiveness and practicality raises problems that can not be overlooked by school administrators; therefore, I urge my school not to adopt an honor code system

They are intended to remind people of their moral standards and encourage students to do the right thing and complete every single assignment with a high level of academic integrity. However this is not always a practical measure. Sometimes trying to instill values in people does not work, and the success of an honor code is ultimately dependent on what types of people are in the classes. Some schools have a large population of students who do not care about academic integrity: “If a student enters a college with mostly “cheater” types, not only are the costs of cheating very low, encouraging fellow “cheater” types to cheat, but the benefits of cheating (or the costs of not cheating) are very high, encouraging even “honest” types to cheat” (Source C). Honor codes lack practicality due to the fact that even if a minority of students are cheaters, their influence can pull students who value integrity down the wrong path. Honor codes get implemented to remind people of their moral values, but they have no power regarding how to change someone entering college with a cheater’s mentality. Most honor codes consist of two parts; agreeing not to cheat, and agreeing to report those who do. When implementing any new system it is important to evaluate whether or not the project is worth the time. It would not be practical to implement an honor code if it is already known that people will not follow it. In a survey conducted

It has already proven itself as a useful tool in some universities. At the University of Virginia a professor had concerns about students cheating and, “To find out for sure, Bloomfield spent an afternoon programming a computer to spot repeated phrases. He fed in computer files of 1,500 term paper from four semesters of classes, and matches started popping up” (Source D). This school has a reputation for instilling the value of honor into every student, and technology was the only way to know who has cheating, honor codes did not help the administration catch anyone. This information shows that technology is required to catch these kinds of slip-ups, when other students do not feel the need to report their peers. One way to use technology as a way to prevent plagiarism is to have students watched while they are taking tests and quizzes. While discussing honor codes a cartoonist wrote that, “Recent research has shown that a spycam can greatly improve an honor code” (Source A). Having a foundation of trust in an honor code system does not actively prevent anything, however if students knew they were under surveillance, they would not cheat due to the knowledge that they would not get away with it. Honor codes are effective when only dealing with students who value academic integrity. The sad reality is that there are cheaters in most schools, and an honor code based off of trust